In today's world technology is progressing very rapidly and one common example is computer technology. Being myself a computer enthusiast, I build my own PCs and I find it very interesting trying to keep pace with its evolution.

I have recently upgraded my latest computer which I initially built a year ago. The upgrade consisted mainly of replacing some buggy peripherals and improving the thermal solution so as to allow future overclocking of the system.

Initial configuration:

Chassis: Asus Vento TA-88

Power Supply Unit: Cooler Master eXtreme Power 550W

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4 (Rev. 3.3)

Central Processing Unit: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600

Central Processing Unit Cooler: Asus P5A2

Memory: 2 x 1GB Kingston DDR2-667

Visual Graphics Accelerator: Gigabyte GV-NX88S320H-B-RH

Audio: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

Optical Drive: Asus DRW-1814BLT

Hard Disk Drive: Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 200GB SATA2

Card Reader/Writer: Generic Internal 3.5" All-In-One

Monitor: Asus MM17D

Keyboard & Mouse: Logitech Cordless Internet Pro Desktop Combo

Printer, Copier & Scanner: HP F380

Speakers: Logitech Z-5500 Digital

Webcam: Logitech QuickCam Fusion

Space was limited and there wasn't any other cooler mounted except for the CPU, VGA and PSU.

The HDD had to be mounted in the 5.25" bay because of the monster VGA.

The initial build.

Actual configuration:

Chassis: Gigabyte 3D Mars

Power Supply Unit: Cooler Master eXtreme Power 550W

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4 (Rev. 3.3)

Central Processing Unit: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600

Central Processing Unit Cooler: Gigabyte 3D Rocket II

Memory: 2 x 1GB Kingston DDR2-667

Visual Graphics Accelerator: Gigabyte GV-NX88S320H-B-RH

Audio: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

Optical Drive: Sony Nec Optiarc AW-G170S

Hard Disk Drive: 2 x Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB SATA2

Card Reader/Writer: Generic Mini External All-In-One

Monitor: Asus MM17D

Keyboard & Mouse: Logitech Cordless Internet Pro Desktop Combo

Printer, Copier & Scanner: HP F380

Speakers: Logitech Z-5500 Digital

Webcam: Logitech QuickCam Fusion

My new set of wealth...

The 3D Rocket II stands at an impressive 16 cm on the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 and hastwo fans mounted, one at the bottom to cool the area around the LGA 775 socket andone at the top which eliminates the heat coming from the processor via the heat-pipes.

WOW... It's so spacious inside.

The DVD burner, the fan controller and the front panel connectivities.

Simple, sleek and stylish!

As already underlined, the principal idea behind the upgrade was to improve the cooling system of the computer. Before, the temperatures I used to record with the Asus P5A2 were as follows:

Idle

Central Processing Unit: 34 - 40 degrees Celsius

Chipset: 54 degrees Celsius

Visual Graphics Accelerator: 63 degrees Celsius

Hard Disk Drive: 49 degrees Celsius

Medium Load

Central Processing Unit: 41 - 47 degrees Celsius

Chipset: 57 degrees Celsius

Visual Graphics Accelerator: 63 degrees Celsius

Hard Disk Drive: 50 degrees Celsius

Gaming/Full Load

Central Processing Unit: 48 - 64 degrees Celsius

Chipset: 62 degrees Celsius

Visual Graphics Accelerator: 74 degrees Celsius

Hard Disk Drive: 50 degrees Celsius

Now, the results speak for themselves...

Thanks to the 9 cooling fans!

This temperature reading was taken while writing this topic and I should admit that it was pretty shocking to see the CPU dissipating a heat of only 23 degrees Celsius with its cooler set to run at its minimum level (Silent: ~1500 RPM & 16 dB) while room temperature was 30 degrees Celsius.

I will be back with some more results soon but in the meantime I want to hear a bit about your computers and also, what you think about mine.

Last edited by Varun on Wed 20 Aug 2008 - 12:31; edited 7 times in total

Well, I switched to Windows Vista (Ultimate 64-bit SP1) yesterday and got everything installed. Everything seemed okay and the visuals were so sublime that it made me forget my good old Windows XP.

Today, I tested the sound of my Logitech Z-5500 (via the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic) and I was so disappointed that all I wanted was to remove that shit (Windows Vista) right away and install Windows XP back.

The thing is that sound processing is done through software on Windows Vista and no more on hardware like the in previous versions of Windows. Hardware sound processing is still far much better than software sound processing and I think I'll get my good old Windows XP (Profesional SP3 ) installed tomorrow.

Last night I installed Windows XP back and I am much more happy with it.

System running at 3 GHz on Windows XP Professional SP3.

Now this morning, I executed GPU-Z for a routine check on my VGA and something struck my mind but first, this is what GPU-Z reported...

Stock VGA Specifications

Stock VGA Sensors

These are the results of my stock Gigabyte GV-NX88S320H-B-RH which is based on the Nvidia G80 chip. The monster dual-slot active cooling system of the VGA is designed for its high temperature operations but nevertheless, the potential of the G80 is great. What all this mean is that there is room for overclocking and without losing time, I started the delicate process.

I should admit I was a bit too hasty and stupid at first because I set the core clock at 600 MHz, the memory clock at 1000 MHz and the shader clock at 1400 MHz while pushing the blower fan at 100% right away. I then decided to do a stress test on the VGA and my heart almost stopped. My screen looked like an abstract art painting and all I could do was to push the reset button of the computer for a reboot so as to revert back to the orignal VGA clocks.

Eventually, I googled a bit and found that in most cases (9 out of 10) it's the shader which causes artifacts if clocked too high and perfomance gain is not significant at all.

www.LegionHardware.com wrote:We find that adjusting the shader clock on the GeForce 8800 GTS makes very little difference, as going from just 1242 MHz to 1566 MHz produced only a 3 FPS performance variance. For a 324 MHz difference this is really somewhat of an insignificant performance gain.

Also, if the core clock and memory clock are set higher than 618 MHz and 1000 MHz respectively with the stock voltages instability may occur.

So, I decided to remain on the safe side of things and after several trials I finally set the core clock at 600 MHz, the memory clock at 950 MHz, the Shader at 1200 MHz and the blower fan at 100%.

The overclocked VGA settings.

The results were pretty good after a VGA stress test...

Click to open in pop-up window.

Click to open in pop-up window.

There were no artifacts found. The temperature of the VGA remained almost constant at around 80 degrees Celsius (which is very much a comfortable temperature for the 'hot' G80 as its default critical temperature set by Nvidia is 110 degrees Celsius) while the northbridge (another 'hot' chip) heated to a maximum of 60 degrees Celsius.

The overclocked settings were then saved to the VGA BIOS...

Click to open in pop-up window.

The system remained stable and I can say I am very satisfied as the maximum memory transfer rate (bandwidth) of the VGA increased from 64 GB/s to 76 GB/s, where my previous VGA (Ati X550) used to output a maximum memory transfer rate of only 8 GB/s.

Prithvi, I built your computer in 2005 and that was a long way back if you consider the speed at which computer technology evolves at this era. However, your VGA is underclocked. You need to fix it. Its bandwidth should normally be at 3.2 GB/s instead of 2.7 GB/s.

By the way, I did some extended stress tests on my VGA today and the results are the same...

Click to open in pop-up window.

Click to open in pop-up window.

With voltages kept at normal levels, with temperatures still not reaching limits and with no effect at all on stability, so much power has been unleashed. I can't be happier and I will now stick to these settings for some time before looking forward to another level of overclocking.

It's time to learn a bit, Shanu. I gifted you a superb Fujitsu Siemens Deskpower P321 some time back along with an Altec Lansing VS3151R and the most interesting aspect of that particular computer is that it is based on a BTX design, which is very rare for common poeple to own one. Moreover, I upgraded the VGA, memory and some other parts for you. It's a shame that you are not making the most out of it.

Using your Fujitsu Siemens Deskpower P321 for home office applications, surfing the web, downloading and listening to compressed audio, watch DVD videos and chat is not called "making the most out of it".

Upgrading is now an old practice. Computer technology is evolving at such a pace nowadays that if you buy a computer today it'll be called a prehistoric machine in two or three years' time. This is because you'll get hardware based on entirely new architectures and which will only operate optimally when coupled with hardware of the same era.

American Muscle Cars aren't bad at all (I love those from Germany though. ) but Made in Taiwan is the best when it comes to computer parts.

I don't know if you still remember but it was you who made me fall in love with Gigabyte Chassis. It was during the beginning of this year and there was a Gigabyte Aurora 570 on display at your work place. I wanted to see the inside, you opened it for me and WOW! It was so spacious and had almost everything built-in to run a contemporary gaming computer cool.

Gigabyte Aurora 570

Built on the same platform, the Gigabyte Aurora 570 was esthetically mind-blowing but perfomance wise the Gigabyte 3D Mars was the better option with 2 80-mm hard disk cooling fans in addition to the three standard 120-mm led fans featuring in both models.

Gigabyte 3D Mars

I didn't lose time, placed a special order and here it is on my desk now.

The subwoofer of the Logitech Z-5500 is one of the best in its class and you won't hear boominess with such drivers. The bass coming out of this monster sounds rather like "Hmmm Hmmm Hmmm". We are talking about real bass here, extremely low frequencies, sound below 80 Hz.